Education
by AmazingGraceless
Summary: Ginny gets hers in Slytherin.


**QFL, write a character in a different house than canon. 1,055.**

"How do you get into Gryffindor House?" Fred's face split into a grin. "You've got to battle a troll, Ginny."

"You're a liar, Frederick Fabian Weasley," Ginny replied, looking him dead in the eyes. "What would the other houses do? Not everyone can battle a troll, and they're not going to kick us out on Day One."

Fred just rolled his eyes— more exasperated than anything else, as his little sister had in fact ruined the joke.

"Don't worry about it then," he said. "Sounds like you'll do fine."

Ginny got up from the living room floor. She should have known better than to ask Fred to be serious about anything regarding Hogwarts— or perhaps she should have stopped at 'anything.'

She ascended the stairs, and entered her room, shutting the door behind her. Now that she was in the space meant for her, she sat at her desk and opened the worn diary sitting amongst posters and pens.

_Dear Tom, _she wrote, enjoying the thrill of writing to a friend that no one could see. _Do you know what they do, to Sort houses at Hogwarts?_

She paused before adding, _Lots of love, Ginny._

She didn't know who had left it in all of her second-hand books, but she loved it all the same. Who knew of such splendid magic as a diary that could talk back, that knew everything?

Tom's response was quick.

_They place a hat on your head, and it decides where you belong, based on what's in your heart._

Ginny faltered a moment. She wasn't brave, not like her brothers. She'd practically ran from Harry the first morning that he'd come to spend the rest of the summer with the Weasleys. She wasn't very bold, she'd decided, either.

_What are the other Houses?_

She figured it couldn't hurt, since surely she wouldn't join her family in Gryffindor, as she wasn't strong enough for that— was she?

_There's Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff— but Slytherin is the one I'm partial to,_ Tom wrote back.

Ginny had heard of Slytherin, now that he'd mentioned it. _Not a witch or wizard who went bad wasn't in Slytherin._

_That is an exaggeration, _Tom promised. _Slytherin is about leadership, ambition, cunning— and learning to balance the darkness within ourselves._

_Maybe it isn't right for me, then._

But Tom refused to give it up, continuing to insist upon the rumored serpent house, assuring her that in Slytherin, she'd belong.

_I'll think about it,_ she promised.

Curious, how the diary was so insistent on such a thing.

It was right in the end, though.

Ginny did fit Slytherin well. Not her first year, when she was a scared little thing under Lord Voldemort himself's influence. Definitely not the first two years after that, either. Ambition and cunning was wiped away in place of service and submission to a dark wizard.

But she supposed she had done one sort of Slytherin thing, according to Tom.

She knew, because of him, because of the wild sorts of magics he'd taught her, of the darkness within herself.

Her desperate curiosity, her thirst to prove herself to be better and more powerful than her own brothers, than the rest of her family.

To prove that she was the Seventh Daughter of a seventh-daughter. After all, the seven Prewett siblings of before were whispered about by others, including her cousin, Mafalda.

But other than that, Ginny believed she didn't belong for a long while after all that had happened in her first year. And it wasn't just the traits a lying snake-boy had whispered, either.

It was the very culture of Slytherin. It was against everything she ever knew. Because of her blood, they said, she was special. She didn't owe a thing to the world because magic was supposedly all her family knew, despite her father's affinity for the muggles.

Some might have rebelled in that very situation. But Ginny would never become a prat like Malfoy, who still saw her father when he saw her.

So she drifted throughout the years, a meek antithesis, the supposed result or example or when the Sorting Hat was wrong.

That changed when Umbridge came.

At first, Slytherins were pleased around her. Umbridge was one of their own, finally come to teach that coveted position of Defense Against the Dark Arts.

But Ginny only had to take one look at that pink cardigan to know the facade. After all, Slytherin had taught her that everyone wore a mask of some sorts. And the type of mask they used to distract told so much about who they were beneath.

Umbridge, besides being Undersecretary the Minister and clearly a danger on that front, had to be a monster because of the disguise she wore. She was pink and soft and frilly. And Ginny learned that in Slytherin, that meant that she was truly terrible deep down inside.

Instead of keeping her suspicions to herself, Ginny plotted and planned, as true Slytherins do. She asked the boy she loved, the boy who lived with a lightning scar on his forehead, to teach her, to teach them all in the magic that defended him from Lord Voldemort in their encounter at the end of the deathly tournament.

She became stronger that year, putting what she'd learned to use. She hadn't realized she'd gotten so much out of Slytherin and her school years before then.

But they made her a survivor and a warrior— one that would lead the charge first into the Battle of Hogwarts, and in peacetime, on the Quidditch pitch.

It was she, that told her eldest son by the lightning boy— now the lightning man— to be quiet when he antagonized his brother about possibly ending up in Slytherin.

"Let me handle this," she told Harry gently as his worried green eyes flicked to his son's matching pair.

There was relief as he let her sweep their son aside. She knelt down.

"Don't worry about James," she said with a smile. "You know, if you go to Slytherin, that makes two of us. Maybe we can corrupt Lily when its her turn."

A conspiracy made him smile, alleviating his fears. That smile alleviated Ginny's. No matter what happened, she thought, he would receive an education.

Perhaps in more than just spell-work and magicology.


End file.
